


Cold War

by Villainyandgoodcheekbones



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Boys Kissing, M/M, On the Run, Other, pseudo-magical realism, watcha gonna do when they come for you?, watcha gonna do?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-17
Updated: 2013-04-17
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/764223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Villainyandgoodcheekbones/pseuds/Villainyandgoodcheekbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The motels are always the same, beige and anonymous, and so similar to one another that they might as well be one motel. One grey, water-stained room, following them forever across time and space. He said so to Enjolras once, but Enjolras just snorted and told him “Go to sleep. A room following us is the least of our problems.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold War

The motels are always the same, beige and anonymous, and so similar to one another that they might as well be one motel. One grey, water-stained room, following them forever across time and space. He said so to Enjolras once, but Enjolras just snorted and told him “Go to sleep. A room following us is the _least_ of our problems.”

The motel has no name, and they’ve signed in under false ones, a single room, because they’re brothers. The receptionist had given them a _look_ at that, like the receptionist always does, until Grantaire smirks, eyebrows twitching up and says “He got all the looks in the family.” Their eyes are the same shade of blue. The receptionist gives them a key to room 24, but it could just as easily be room 60, room 1, and it would make no difference at all, because it’s the same room every time. Grantaire is convinced.

It’s hard to call it ‘domestic’, when they’re hopping across countries not much bigger than Paris is, if they are at all, leaving a breadcrumb trail of ditched cars behind them.

Well.

Multiple trails, most of them dead ends. They’re a lot of things, but they’re not stupid.

But it is, though, it’s domestic. They’ve spent so much time now in this shitty motel room, the same damn room every time, that it’s begin to feel like home. The window’s always open, and it’s always too cold. Enjolras rolls his shirt sleeves up anyway, almost invisible hairs prickling up on his blue-veined marble forearms.

His briefcase is full of banknotes, a Beretta, the spare one that matches the one tucked into the holster criss-crossing over his back and shoulders. Grantaire’s is full of bullets, a handle of cheap vodka you could conceivably use to strip paint. They go on top of the bed, side by side. The shower is always too small, barely big enough for one person, let alone two. They don’t care. They never do.

They’re not brothers, they’re closer than that, two halves of one thing, really, pressed together under the water, which swings wildly between scalding and an icy slap. Grantaire arcs backward, mouthing at Enjolras’s jaw, wraps fingers in his soaking-wet hair. He gasps into the steam. There’s a gun on the corner of the sink, just under the mirror in easy reach. Just in case. And sometimes Grantaire closes his eyes and they’re so close together they can barely move, pressed up against cracked tile, and his cheek is against Enjolras’s chest and he grins “What if they caught us, just like this?”

“They’re not going to catch us”

It’s a lie.  But they’re always talking past each other like that. Grantaire says “what if they catch us” and Enjolras thinks that he wants some kind of reassurance. So he says “they won’t” but he means “there’s a gun on the corner of the sink, they can’t touch us”. But Grantaire only meant “we’re gonna go out bloody, we both know it, let it be like this”

But he believes in Enjolras, so he presses closer, close like they’re only one person in one skin and pretends that he doesn’t know better.

There used to be more of them. Before things got bad, and Combeferre took Feuilly and Bahorel and went off somewhere, and Courfeyrac disappeared with Jehan. Chetta’s hiding somewhere, with her boys. It’s only supposed to be until things die down, and it’s safe again. It just never seems to get any safer, and they just keep running.

And occasionally breaking and entering and stealing things in suitably dramatic fashion. That too. Fucking in the woods in the backseat of a stolen car when Enjolras still tastes like cordite, sometimes blood, and Grantaire tastes like vodka because he claims he can’t shoot sober. They do that sometimes. Sometimes he hopes it’s never safe ever again.

The door is the same door, a little warped so it won’t close all the way. Which is good, because it means they can see out into the hallway, in case somebody’s coming. It’s the little things. The sheets scratch. And it’s not safe to sleep together, so they sleep one at a time, blue eyes looking over dark hair, or over gold into the hall, which is empty. So far.

He wakes up with his head in the crease of Enjolras’s hip, staring up at the ceiling, where there’s a stain that looks like a pistol, if you’re squinting, or a little drunk. Grantaire is both, and he presses his mouth against marble skin and bone and murmurs “Was that there before?”

“What?”

“The stain. Up there” He points. “That’s new, isn’t it?”

Enjolras says how should he know, the last time they stopped and slept in a room was six days ago, in another country, he’s never been here before. Grantaire closes his eyes and says “yeah, but it’s the same room. Every fucking time, all the rooms are the same.” It’s snowing outside. It usually is. They both have black gloves, grey suits, thin black ties, although Enjolras wears a red vest instead. He’s a symbol. He has a red scarf too, like a banner, wrapped around the lower half of his face. He’s a symbol, but he’s not stupid.

Grantaire isn’t stupid either, but he doesn’t bother. Nobody’s looking at him. He’s “an accomplice”. On all the reports, all the alerts, it’s Enjolras, and “an accomplice”. Sometimes they call him ‘Robin’ because of the red, or the things he says to security cameras about oppression, about institutionalized violence and equality; Grantaire laughs ‘am I Marian, then?’ and calls Enjolras ‘Locksley’ as long as he can before he falls apart, boneless and seeing stars with Enjolras over him and in him, explaining in a voice just this side of rough why petty inter-class theft is not a viable long-term strategy, and all Grantaire can say back is “Enjolras, God, _God”_

Although why he keeps saying the same thing over and over is up for grabs.

It’s only temporary, these fly-by-night skirmishes, until it’s safe enough to get back to the _real_ fight. It’s not going to be like this forever. Just for the winter.

Combeferre calls sometimes, payphones mostly. It’s good to hear another voice, but it never seems quite as real.

They drive for eight days straight, and Grantaire is fairly certain at this point, if you cut them, they’d bleed cheap coffee. It’s all they can taste, bitter-black in his mouth, in Enjolras’s. It’s not safe to stop, not really, but at some point, you have to, so they check into a motel. Last name Denis, like the saint, brothers. Head cocked, the desk clerk nods and says “Ah yes. I can see it. You have the same eyes. Room 32”

There’s no pistol-shaped stain on the ceiling, but the window is open and the door won’t close.

“Told you.” Grantaire drawls as he strips off his jacket. “Same damn room, every time.”


End file.
